I think it is important to emphasize that despite the Jan. 20 inauguration's occurring one day after the national celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama is not King.
He is also not a king. Therefore, do not decorate his head with a crown of thorns (or gold and jewels). Recognize that he is the elected leader of what is supposed to be a democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people. Our Constitution states that he is but a servant of the will of the people. The people must lead him - not the other way around.
Yet this same democracy, conceived with far better intentions than those of its current stewards, has been trampled on by U.S. president after U.S. president for hundreds of years in the form of illegal wars, institutional racism, and crippling poverty.
in the 1960s Dr. King spoke out against the three-headed monster: materialism, racism, and militarism. His work is far from over. The forces he resisted so courageously and selflessly are even more deeply entrenched than they were in his time. His words become more prophetic with each passing day, and I know he would still be marching were he alive. But that's Dr. King, who wore the garment of a preacher and the suit of a civil rights activist. Just as a house cannot stand if divided against itself, President Obama can never successfully confront the three core evils of this imperfect union as its head administrator. He is now the leader of the "world's greatest purveyor of violence." If only we had a new King...
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